Wonder Wheel (a.k.a. Paul Rosales) doesn't want to settle down. From sweet pop to desolate noise, Rosales has basically released it all within the past six months.
The genre-less solo artist may be one of the best thing this bedroom movement can offer, so let's call Wonder Wheel a harbinger of great patchwork artists to come.
Exhibit A. He “wants to sing about riding trains” but maybe he's stuck somewhere (“with you, tonight,” so he claims) and it leaves a nice insular ring around his gentle, steady pop tune “Deep in the Bottle,” a track that'll appear on a November EP called Succotash Xs
Wonder Wheel, “Deep in the Bottle”
And it's time for something completely different in an earlier track like “Rascal,” with an intro that veers sharply towards the hypnagogic pop fetishism of arpegettiated 80s synth tones and layers of soft hiss and slanted fidelity, but doesn't stay predictable for long thanks to Rosales' pleading full-throated wallop that recalls David Byrne, and employs minor-third vocal harmonies like those that make Remain in Light so evocative.
Finally, he recently offered a download for a Halloween-themed 7″ (bit late, sorry folks) on his blog. Halloween themed in that it is the sound of death. It's a wobbling, netherworld of minimalism, at times barely breathing or beating, with rarely more than a single, undulating atonal melody synth line scraping along the surface.
Download the Extreme Zombies 7″ here.
